


Seasons

by miranda_wave (miranda_askher)



Series: Who We Choose to Be [1]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, F/M, Pete's World, Post-JE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-16
Updated: 2011-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-19 11:27:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/200335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miranda_askher/pseuds/miranda_wave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is no end to the seasons. They only come, and go.</p><p>[Rose Tyler, moving through.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Winter

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing. But if a blue box lands in my yard, I am so gone.

Even after all these years, the snow seems to fall harder near Bergen.

Winter is supposed to come first, she thinks: a cold lonely season warmed by the promise of spring.

There’s also supposed to be spring. Not this endless procession of days and funerals while her skin stays as smooth as it was on Satellite Five.

She’s seen the vibrant opening flowers of a thousand worlds, felt the joy of friendship and even love, if cut short, as summer always is. She’s seen the autumn, the endless empty high blue sky and the bright leaves, all fallen from the trees in a windy night.

Perhaps winter is her season: she will become the Ice Queen of Torchwood in fact as well as in the whispers of her employees.

She shivers.


	2. Spring

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's so much more real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup. Not mine.

It’s like waking up.

Nineteen years of hibernation, and then an odd man in a basement, and the word run. She never even realized she was asleep. She might think her life now, so wonderful, is a dream except it’s so much more real than anything she did before.

The danger is the bits in between, and in the meantime they journey from a planet with frozen waves to one with blue meadows, a jungle bursting with color, and Holland in tulip season.

She finds a seed within herself, and sees the flowers she could show the world. She breathes on it: grow, grow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Coming soon: the story of the adventure on Astra Mari, the planet of blue meadows.


	3. Summer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They are never cold.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: yeah, I know I can't keep them. Just borrowing.

She lights the golden glow in the sky: it burns warm, a sun she can carry with her.

The light changes everything, moves the shadows, guides her eyes. He changes with it, and she loves him in a new way: she knows it. She knows he loves her too.

It’s plain as day, and while it wants saying sometimes, it doesn’t need it. Not when things are this clear and bright.

No matter when they are, running or laughing or dancing or nearly dying, they’re never cold. They travel to the birth of the sun, the Bermuda Nebula, Scandinavia in June. The Solstice finds them sprawled on a beach in Norway, where the sun doesn’t set till midnight. They fall asleep there before it goes down, and wake to the sound of gulls on a bright morning.


	4. Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She stays behind at Bad Wolf Bay...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not mine.
> 
> Look out below: city of angst including lots of character death.

When she stays behind at Bad Wolf Bay the second time, she feels the finality even more keenly than the first. But there are still spots of bright color in her life, standing by her on the beach.

It doesn’t take long for her to see how ephemeral they are.

He’s gone for years before she visits him, the new him, in Cardiff. While she’s there, the old hollowness of his eyes fills a little, and the grey in his hair seems to fade. They are friends again.

He comes with her to Jackie’s funeral, then Pete’s, both under the shade of turning leaves. He is thirty-five years old, or seventy. She’s fifty-seven, or nineteen.

When she stays behind at Bad Wolf Bay the third time, watching the fine mist of ashes curl over the sea, she knows that there is no end to the seasons. They only come, and go.

The first flakes of snow drift into her hair as she walks back to the car.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Feel like this is missing a chunk? See here: [In Two](http://archiveofourown.org/works/200346).


End file.
